A Climbing Betty's journey to find love & strength in the mountains

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We finally had our first freeze over the weekend. Snow flurries reportedly fell in the area too. By Monday, my Facebook feed was full of photos and videos of folks hitting the opening day of Killington (the earliest resort to open in the entire country) or backcountry stashes across the far north. And yesterday, the Black Dyke on Cannon Cliff saw its first ascent- the unofficial start of winter in the northeast. (Congrats by the way to Majka & Alexa! Not only did they grab the first ascent this year, but I believe they are the first all women’s team to grab the first ascent of the season.) Then today, the high temps topped out above 70. It was a gorgeous day for fall rock climbing.

And I just mopped.

For one, I’m just getting over being sick, so I am way behind in work. (Not to mention that pesky illness ruined my plans to attend this year’s climbing film fest). But very soon, it will be November. And quite frankly, I hate November.

November is part of the dreaded ‘shoulder season.’ Too cold to rock climb, not quite cold enough and not enough snow for skiing. Around Halloween, I put the rock climbing gear away and take up waiting for snow and the start of ski season with the eagerness that would rival a child waiting for the arrival of Santa. It’s usually a long dreary wait that often exceeds my thin reserves of patience.

The other shoulder season is in the spring. But at least April has the decency to yield amazing backcountry corn harvests if you are willing to trek for them. Most Aprils, I put the skis away one weekend, grab out the gear and start rock climbing again the next.

But not November. Oh no, not November.

November is just 4 dreary, dread-filled weeks of nothing but watching the days get ridiculous short.

November makes me cranky. Surly, even.

And this year its worse. Because this year, it started a month early.

Owing to the time away I’ve taken away to look after my husband in the wake of his accident and subsequent rehab, I’ve hardly climbed in the last couple of months. I started off the season on such a strong note- I had high hopes for making a lot of progress. In the end, I don’t think I’ve completed a single “goal” climb this season. Starting next season with the same goals as this one is kind of depressing and hasn’t left me interested in making the most of the what’s left of the season. In fact, I’m quite content to close the book on this season and start on the next winter season. If only the weather would cooperate!

How about you? How do you handle the beautiful nightmare of the shoulder season???

Have you been to the Gunks? Do you know how epic climbing here can be? I thank my lucky stars this is my home crag, but even I haven’t seen it look this sexy before. Give it a watch. Fair warning: probably NSFW if you find beautiful footage of climbers free-soloing classic routes to cause your palms & brow to break out in a cold sweat, your heart rate to increase and your breathing to become more shallow & rapid- necessitating a hasty exit to the nearest bathroom… or supply closet.

Shameless plug- if you do plan a climbing trip here- go over to the App Store and download yourself the Trapps App (and now the Nears App too!). This is really the best ‘guidebook’ to the area. And since you’re carrying your phone with you for all those summit selfies you’ll put on Instagram later, no excuse not to download it.

The last few weeks have been quite the roller coaster to say the least! First, vacation in North Conway, NH. Ahead of a wedding in Maine, we decided to treat ourselves to a little climbing trip and time with some good friends in North Conway. There was a definite heat wave in effect that week, with afternoon T-storms in the forecast each day. Because of the lackluster forecast, we never made it out to Cannon. On our first day in in the area, we did go out to Humphrey’s Ledge to sample Wanderlust, which did not disappoint. As we started a second climb though, we heard some pretty loud thunder, checked the radar, and decided it was Moat- thirty. We got some lunch and beer at the Moat and an hour later, realized that the storm had never materialized. As we sat there, our buddy Dave told us the story of a barstool-to-barstool ascent of Upper Refuse in 58 minutes. They didn’t even close their tab before they left!

I’m pretty sure that was before Dave becamw a dad though, but a new challenge was on the table. Could all three of us go climb this 3 pitch climb and be in the car and on our way to pick up Dave’s son from daycare on time? Challenge accepted! We clocked a car to car time of 36 minutes for the three of us. Thankfully Dave has guided that climb so many times, he can carry a rack of only 5 cams and two slings and knows exactly how to stretch the rope to just make it. Only this time, he had us on the other end of the line, so we simul-climbed up to the first good ledge, giving him enough rope to run it out all the way and belay off of the fence. I felt giddy like a child at play as we ran down the climber’s trail and scampered across, up and over rocks with a minimum of gear. J was tied in on an alpine butterfly about 20 feet above me on the rope and ever the guide, he could read my face and if there was a section that I had even a modicum of doubt about (there were one or two) he gave me a quick down and dirty belay via a Munter on the carabiner of one of the cams. Luckily, there was only a small section or two that needed this and the climbing really is pretty straight forward. It was a fun time!

The other highlight of the trip was my first 5.9 lead! They Died Laughing at the North End, which apparently is everybody’s first 5.9. It was a bit slick on the first 15 feet from a rain storm the previous evening, but that section I managed to cruise. Though I climbed it clean on top-rope just before, I did hang on a piece or two at the cruz to rest. The crack there is just a bit off hands for me and with the humidity, I was slipping a lot in the crack. Enough that I wore tape gloves for the actual lead to give myself a bit more friction. That did help, but I think my mind was still anticipating the slipping. Anyway, I definitely wouldn’t call myself a 5.9 leader now by any stretch, but I found in past seasons that it’s easier for me to take on the mental hurdle of a new grade on the infinitely protectable vertical cracks of NH granite. Usually by the fall, I feel ready to start trying some cherry-picked climbs of that grade at the Gunks. So even though it was a perfectly clean ascent, I was super proud of myself for taking on the mental challenge and even more excited about going on a rampage this fall when good temps returned to the Gunks.

And then IT happened.

At the end of the week after we returned from vacation J was at working, guiding of course, I was getting back to my routine at the office as well. They previous day, we had had a wonderful time taking my nieces to the AMC Slabs for their first experience outdoor rock climbing.

I was in my office when he called. “Don’t freak out, just listen to me, and listen carefully. I fell. I have an open compound tib-fib fracture. Andrew is on his way and they’ll have me out of here soon. Don’t come to the cliff, just go to the hospital. Meet me at Mid Hudson Regional. Bye.”

I was shocked and stunned. And instantly in triage mode. I called my afternoon patient and informed her that I had an emergency and would have to reschedule. I called my folks, still on their drive home from their visit, and told them there had been a bad accident. I walked out of my office, forgot something, walked back in again, repeated that cycle three times before actually started to drive. I thought about stopping by the house to let the our dog out, but decided to just drive straight to the hospital. On the way, I called friends who came to pick her up and let her stay and their house for the next 5 days.

Along the drive to the hospital, my phone rang off the hook with friends calling to let me know what happened, make sure I knew what had happened and offer their support. Some where along the way I got a call that he was just being placed in the back of the ambulance and I knew I could finally take my time because I was going to make it to the hospital before him. Since he was supposed to take his AMGA Rock Instructor Exam the following week, I started to make calls on his behalf to cancel those plans while I wanted for the ambulance to get to the hospital.

I waited in the ambulance bay for what seemed like forever in the hot August sun. Then the bus finally backed in and I opened the door to greet them. Him, really. I needed to see with my own eyes that it wasn’t any worse than what I had been told and I knew once he was in the ER, the doctors and nurses would be swarming him and making it difficult for me to be with him.

Speaking of swarming, that’s apparently what happened. He was starting to lead the second pitch of a climb in the Nears when suddenly he was been swarmed by something stinging him. His client was getting stung as well, so he made the decision that rappelling would be the safer option and the one that would get them away from the swarming insects the quickest. He had not yet placed a piece, so he started to climb back down to his anchor. He had thought he had grabbed the cordelette and made a controlled jump on to the belay ledge. We’re still not sure what he grabbed, but it wasn’t that. He hit the ledge with more force than calculated and his ankle bore the brunt of that extra force. Despite the trauma and the pain, he decided to use the limited adrenaline-fueled window of time he had to rig a rappel off of his anchor (the insects are still swarming and stinging through this as well), then set up a stacked rappel so that he and his client could both get down safely. He then proceeded to direct his own rescue until our friend, the head climbing ranger, showed up. Pretty badass, no? The word ‘hero’ has even been thrown around and I don’t disagree.

Speaking of heros- let me just say, we have an excellent team of trained climbing rangers on staff here in the Gunks. These guys and gals have your back.

Two hours of surgery and few pins & a plate later, my husband was back in one piece. He was ordered non-weight bearing for 5 weeks while the bones healed. Then at least 3 months of physical therapy. The accident happened two weeks ago now. Since he can’t stand on that leg, I’m at home a lot these getting him food, meds and generally watching after him. I barely get out to run these days, let alone climb.

I don’t know if I will get my Gunks rampage on this fall or not, but I can honestly say, I don’t really care one way or another. I haven’t climbed since the day of my lead in NH. I’ve just got way too much other stuff on my plate. Not too mention, a lot of my future plans and goals were dependent on J being my partner for them- and I feel like I have to do a bit of mourning to release those. Times like this do have a way of reminding you about what is truly important and readjusting priorities. J is in one piece and will make a pretty full recovery. We have each other. And we have a wonderful community around us who have offered so much love and support. In the end, I think that’s truly what keeps me coming back to climbing- not the grades, nor chasing them, or even the rock itself, but enjoying a nature, engaging in that shared challenge with good people.

Whoa! My poor, neglected blog. In my defense, I’ve been pretty busy doing ‘the thing.’ My climbing season started the first week of April and it’s been nearly full-steam ahead since. Even with the little hiccup of a tweak to my left A2 pulley, I’m back to leading as hard as I was at the end of last season, which gives me a lot of hope that I’ll be breaking into the next number grade by the end of this season. I finally got to climb with DH a day last week and it was exciting to hear from him that I’m really placing excellent gear, so that also gives me the confidence to begin to push it a bit!

The BIG news though is where my head is at so far. See, here’s my dirty little secret. I’m not naturally small and lean like many climber chicks, especially the really good ones. I’m definitely a classic ‘pear’ shape (read: probably the worse shape for climbing!). For many, many years of my climbing career, the story in my head (my excuse, really) is that I’m just too fat to be able to climb as hard as I want to climb.

I have invested a lot of time and energy in this story over the years, so I’ve had to invest even more time and energy to tear it down. For instance, all of my goal climbs for this season I can climb without falling on top-rope. So I have to remind myself that my body is physically capable of doing these climbs without falling. Therefore, I can lead them. So what is stopping me is not that I’m ‘fat,’ it’s that I’m scared. Odd as it may sound, its easier to accept the ‘fat story’ than the ‘I’m just scared’ story. Probably because with the ‘I’m too fat’ story, I don’t have to change anything. In those moments that I am standing under the climb, looking up at it and contemplating the lead, I can’t do anything about being fat in those moments, whereas I could choose to be scared and do it anyway. But if I blame my body, I don’t have to do the harder thing- I don’t have to be afraid.

The hidden cost of this ‘fat’ story though, is that I was constantly defeating myself on any efforts I made to get in shape or eat better. In a way, I didn’t want to do these things because if I succeeded- if I lost weight- I wouldn’t have my convenient excuse available for when I wanted to wuss out of doing a climb.

There’s an idea in the psychology literature that people are basically motivated in their actions and behaviors by one of two things: they are either motivated to move in the direction of something they love or are passionate about or they are motivated to move away from something that causes them pain. We all do both of these of course, depending on the area of our lives, our previous learned experiences, etc. However, some people, through their upbringing or genetics or something, tend to be more positively motivated whereas others tend to be more negatively motivated.

Once I learned this concept, it kind of hit me like a ton of bricks. I was square in the ‘negative-motivation’ category. I would choose easy climbs, or make excuses for why I couldn’t or shouldn’t do harder climbs because I was primarily motivated to avoid the fear of being on the sharp end. I would start a workout routine or a diet with the negative-motivation of trying to move away from the pain of self-hatred & disgust. Upon seeing it so clearly, it was also easy to see how these strategies clearly were not working for me! Suddenly it made complete and total sense as to why I would say I wanted one thing in my life, but my behaviors and actions seemed to indicate that I wanted the opposite! All this time, I thought that that incongruence was just because I was lazy (another painful thing to berated myself for!) but it turns out that nope, I just had my mind attuned in the wrong direction.

Somewhere about the beginning of April, I was struck by an idea. One of the things I do possess is a strong and powerful mind. Perhaps I could find away to put that gift to use to change my situation; to start being motivated by love instead of fear. I decided to embark on a month long journey of “radical self-love” where I was just going to accept and love everything about myself, even the parts that I didn’t think where very worthy of that love. Especially the parts that I didn’t think were very worthy of that love (I’m looking at you, Cellulite on my thighs!).

I started simply. I challenged myself to journal regularly and to start each entry with 3 things I love about myself, focusing primarily on my body (because it’s easy to say things like ‘I’m smart’ but much harder to say things like ‘I love my thighs’). I also challenged myself to change to my relationship with food. To feed myself like I would feed a daughter or someone else that I loved- with lots of wholesome, healthy foods.

Interestingly, this journey didn’t conclude in a month as much as it evolved. Especially once I tweaked my finger pulley, I knew I need to find something to do to help me stay active. I decided to get in to trail running. At various points in my life, I have been a runner. I even ran a marathon 8 years ago. After that experience though, I pretty much felt like I had run enough for the rest of my life and was not motivated to run anymore. I hate the treadmill with a passion. Cardio at the gym bored the heck out of me, etc. I knew that if I was going to be motivated to do it consistently, it needed to be something I enjoyed. Trail running, luckily, is that for me. And also luckily for me, there are tons of awesome and fun trails minutes from my home. It became fun and addicting to explore new sections of the Ridge on my own two feet. I also love trail running because its perfectly acceptable to walk up the big hills and even to go slow, especially over really technical terrain. It also puts me out in nature, which I love because its feeds my soul as well as my physical body. Once I found something that I enjoyed and once I change my mindset from ‘I’ve got to do cardio because I’m fat’ to ‘I want to run because I enjoy it and I enjoy taking care of my body,’ it became so much easier to get out of bed and go for a run in the morning! No mental fighting with myself. No extreme acts of willpower. Just being motivated to do and follow something that I loved.

With this evolved mindset, it was much easier to put myself in training. I started to think of myself as an athlete, which gave me the motivation to want to take the best care of myself that I could. I started following the training plan from Training for the New Alpinism. I’m only in Transition Week 3 so far, but I feel amazing & fit and I’m so excited for what I’ll be able to do when I ‘peak’ around the first of the year- just in time to go hard for ice climbing and ski mountaineering!

Other people are starting to notice too. A couple girlfriends have mentioned that my arms look more toned or that I look thinner through the torso. Another friend followed me as I busted up a rocky ascent trail with very little huffing & puffing and remarked about how all the trail running seemed to be paying off. In the gym today, I actually really liked what I saw in the mirror! I’ve lost a few pounds, but nothing too big yet and maybe an inch off my hips. (Also, I can’t say that I exactly ‘love’ my cellulite, but I have given up making gagging and retching noises when I see it in the mirror.:-) ) I’m more excited about being down about 2% body fat in three weeks and I know that with time, the rest of it will come.

And if doesn’t, I’m totally OK with that. Because my goal is to be fit and healthy and I know that I can do what I want to do, even if I never drop another pound. Because I know that all that is stopping me is that 3 pound squishy thing between my ears. Because I know that if I choose to pursue the things I love instead of avoid the things I fear, no matter what number grade I climb or what number shows up on the scale, I’ve already won. <3

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted. I can happily say that that is mostly because I have been too busy doing cool stuff to update my blog!

This season I decide to try my hand at ski instructing. Oh man, did I learn a ton! I’d like to think that my own skiing has improved drastically. I tackled my first double black diamond runs this season. I’ve made some forays into the bumps without having a total melt-down. And I’m getting into the trees a bit. My goal is to be a confident, all-mountain, all-conditions skier. That feels more possible now than it’s ever been!

Last weekend was probably one of my more memorable ski experiences of the season. Hubby and I travel to the Adirondacks for the Backcountry Ski Festival. If you haven’t gone, put it on your calendar for next year! (It’s always the first weekend of March.) I didn’t take any clinics this year, but hope to maybe do so next year. The goal for this trip was for hubby to demo some skis for him for next season. I can happily say, mission accomplished in that regard! This season was his first season back skiing in 26 years. The last time he skied, skis were long, skinny and straight! It took a few seasons of convincing him that the ‘new’ shaped skis practically turn themselves, but he agreed to give it a try this year. He was a little tentative at first, but quickly remembered the skills he learned years ago. The season rental he had been skiing on didn’t hold a candle to the boards he got to ride at the Backcountry Ski Fest though! He surprised me picking one of the more modern-shaped skis they offered, the Black Diamond Carbon Convert. I rode these puppies as well and they are super fun! Light, light, light! But with a just enough stiffness to charge through chop and crud. Anyway, the best part of the Ski Fest were the people and the atmosphere. The sun was shining, it was relatively warm and everyone was simply having a blast getting after it, celebrating that particular brand of magic that comes from the combination of warm sun and cold snow.

The next day we got to borrow some Voile Vectors and head on a small tour with a local friend. We didn’t have a lot of time, so we weren’t able to get into any of the brooks or slides that are so perfect for skiing in the Daks. This was a little run through the trees. It snowed big, fat, fluffy flakes on us all day. There is already so much snow up there! When we got to the top of the glade, I stepped out of my ski to take the skin off and when I went to stand on my foot, it sunk in the snow up to the top of my thigh! I’m pretty sure it only stopped because my other leg was still attached to a ski that was on top of the snow and my joints and ligaments thankful wouldn’t permit anymore separation than that! (Note to self: must learn how to rip skins without removing skis!)

The skiing was such a small part of the day, but it was an interesting challenge for me to ski through natural glades. (Plus, all that skinning was a great justification for downing some fresh doughnuts from the ADK Cafe!) I had to constantly remind myself to focus on the openings, not the trees! It wasn’t the prettiest skiing I’ve ever done, but at least I didn’t run into any trees!

The tree situation reminded me that I am grateful that I signed up for the PSIA Intro to Bumps Clinic- ah the benefits of membership! I’ve been told by various people that the skills for bumps skiing translate well to tree skiing, and you get to practice without the threat of running into the trees! Until that connection was made, I really had no interest in skiing bumps. I’m still not really attracted to the bumps as much as I want to get better at tree skiing! Hopefully, I can take a clinic on that next year….

The bump clinic will be right after my Level 1 exam. Hopefully, getting my Level 1 pin will be a nice cherry on the top of my ski season sundae!

So far, my only regret of this season is not getting more ice climbing in. I climbed TWO whole pitches of ice this season. Which is made even more grim by the fact that I got a pair of Stingers for an early Christmas present this year from the hubby. From the two measly little pitches I did get to climb on them, they were fantastic though! Very happy with them as crampons! Hopefully next winter I will be able to find a better balance between the going up and the coming down.

It’s starting to warm up here in the valley and with the days getting longer too, spring- and with it the end of the ski season- now feel profoundly inevitable. Part of me of me is looking forward to rock season. I’ve got some big goals for this season that I have already started training for. However, I’m not quite ready *yet.* I really want to get another ski tour or two in this season before I call it quits. Of course, the truth is, I say that now, and if I do manage those two ski tours- I’ll just want more. Either way, the only certainty is- I always need more time in the mountains, whether climbing or skiing!

Over the first weekend of the new year, I had the privilege to take an AIARE 1 course with Eastern Mountain Sports in North Conway, NH. As an aspiring backcountry skier, AIARE 1 had been on my radar for quite awhile. It just seemed like a no-brainer to me to learn about the risks and how to mitigate them when traveling in backcountry terrain. Understanding and mitigating objective and subjective hazards is an important part of having a long career in the mountains.

The subtitle of AIARE 1 is “Decision Making” and the course lives up to that. You are given the tools you need to begin assessing snow hazards and make decisions to mitigate the risks of those hazards. Assessing avalanche terrain and snow instability, identifying avalanche problems and understanding an avalanche bulletin, objective tests to measure the degree of snow instability, and basic companion rescue techniques are covered.

Currently, AIARE 1 is structured as a three day course. There is 8 hours of classroom instruction, a module on companion rescue, including how to use a beacon, probe and shovel, an observational outing where you learn to dig snow pits and objectively assess snow stability, all of which culminates in a ski tour/hike in to avy terrain to apply the skills you’ve just learned. I personally found the course to be a great mix of didactic classroom learning coupled with hands-on application. But be warned: taking an AIARE 1 course will not make you an expert overnight.

In fact, the weekend cemented my opinion that AIARE 1 is really just the first step in what should be a lifetime of learning how to travel safely in the mountains. What it does effectively is provide a framework to direct and give more meaning to future experiences and learning. This sentiment was echoed by almost all of my classmates in the course debrief: it is both a foundational course and, yet just the tip of the iceberg. I would also underscore that the most important piece of gear anyone carries in the backcountry is good judgement. While that can’t be bought per se, enrolling yourself in an AIARE 1 course is almost the same thing.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention the quality of the instruction from Dave Lottman and Mike Lackman, our course instructors. Both are guides with Eastern Mountain Sports and very obviously passionate about avalanche education and teaching folks how to travel safely in the mountains. Both are a wealth of experience and knowledge and ‘practice what they preach’ (though they aren’t preachy in the least).

Bottom line: if you venture into the backcountry (or side country), travel in avalanche terrain, or just like playing in the snow, get your butt into an AIARE 1 class PRONTO!

I had originally written this whole long diatribe about how I got started skiing, how important winter is, etc. Then I deleted it. Why? Because if you ski or enjoy a winter sport, you know already. I don’t need to restate the obvious. The current trend in global climate change does not bode well for winter sport enthusiasts. If we would like to continue our sports for a long time to come, we need to get serious about making decisions that lessen carbon-belching behaviors.

If you love skiing like I do, a great way to do this is to start with your gear. Last year I had to opportunity to demo a few skis from RAMP. I was looking for a quiver-killer, my one ski to do it all. For one, I’m not made of money, so I don’t really have the luxury to have a whole quiver of skis. But also, more stuff is more stuff- more materials that have to be harvested & processed & shipped. Which means more fossil fuels, more carbon, etc. Which in one of the other reason I set my sites on a pair of RAMP skis- they are made with FSC-certified bamboo wood cores right in Park City, UT. So not only are they eco-friendly, but some Utah ski bum gets to be gainfully employed because of my purchase too.

I demoed the Beaver and the Chickadee. I was honestly dead set on the Beaver before I went. At 100mm underfoot, I thought I would be able to ride them at the resort as well as in the backcountry. However, this is why you demo- I had a lot of trouble getting the Beavers on edge. My legs felt utterly worked by the time I got downhill with them. The Chickadees however, put a smile on my face the whole way down the mountain. I know its not the most technical of reviews but, in the end, I went with the Chickadees simply because they made me say, “wwwweeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!” all the way down the mountain.

I’ve gotten a couple days out this season on my Chickadees and I continue to love them. I personally find that they don’t carve as strongly a narrower ski, but this may also be related to a boot issue I am still working out. Yesterday in particular, they were actively making snow on a few trails. That’s pretty darn close to a ‘powder’ day for us around these parts. And that’s when my Chickadees really shine. They slice through the chop, and are surfy and floaty in the pow.

I say all of this to point out that I didn’t have to accept less in the performance department by choosing a greener product. Continuing the bamboo theme, I have a pair of Soul Poles to go with them. Bamboo ski poles folks. The original ski pole. Again, made in Park City, UT by real live ski bums 🙂 I’m not sure how you get more eco-friendly than that.

I’m also planning to pick up some Green Wax to use when I need to touch up the wax. Most waxes contain nasty chemicals like PFCs that get left behind on the snow and then run into local waterways when the snow melts in the spring. Yuck. Hopefully, I’ll have more to say about the performance of Green Wax in the future. I’ve also been eyeing some Astis mittens, which are made here in the US and beaded by hand. They are a bit spendy for me though, and I have several pairs of gloves that are quite functional for me still, so in this case, the ‘greener’ option is to keep using what I have.

The harder options for ‘green’ ski gear appear to be boots & helmets. These are items that aren’t necessarily the best idea to buy secondhand. I’d love to see plastics that can be recycled and liners/foam inserts that are removable and can be repurposed/upcycled in some way. If there is a company out there doing something like this, I’d love to know, so I can support them! Tell me about any such things you know of in the comments!

How about you? How have you ‘greened you gear?’

P.S. Please consider following and join Protect Our Winters– a great organizations of ski pros working to back efforts to reduce carbon emissions and ensure plenty of POW for winters to come!!!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. My climbing season is winding down (more like, its done) and now its my LEAST favorite time of year. November.

I despise November simply because its generally too damn cold to rock climb and yet, it hasn’t gotten cold enough to ice climb or ski yet. This morning I woke up and despite the pellet stove, it was only 59 degrees in my bedroom upstairs. I’m seriously thinking of seeing if Feathered Friends won’t make me a down snuggie. I love winter, generally, because I love playing in and on the snow & ice, but this brutal cold without the instant gratification of my beloved winter sports, just sucks.

I say all this because maybe I’m just cranky. I’m adult enough to admit it.

So when I watched the video for the Access Fund’s Commit to the Pact project today, I’ve gotta say, I think this was a waste of time and resources.

NOT because protecting climbing access isn’t important to me. It’s extremely important to me. And as I’ve demonstrated above, climbing and being outside are integral parts of my mental health care routine and are probably necessary for the physical safety of those around me. But here’s why I think this campaign misses the mark:

1.) I already do this!!!! Maybe its my trad roots, but this is how I roll whenever I climb. I pack my shit out. Literally. (I’ll never forget summiting Rainier with a FULL blue bag attached to my pack and having to carry it all the way back down to Camp Muir.) At the crag, I am often picking up other people’s trash and packing it out too. I respect designated parking signs, unlike this person…I’m not listening to loud music. I’m not climbing in a big group. I stay on the trails. I respect closures, etc. Since I already do this, what is the point in committing to some sort of pact to do the behaviors I already do? Unless my home cliff is some sort of mythical exception to the rules, this is the way my climbing friends roll too. (Though a few folks could be a little better on the packing-it-out-thang, like when I find someone else’s TP in the woods…..). So it seems silly to me to create a campaign to ask people to commit to doing the things they already do.

2.) The minority of climbers- the ones who need to hear this message and change their behavior, are not going to be impacted by this. Like the person parked next to the No Parking sign above. They don’t care about how their shitty park job might affect other people’s access. They are selfishly thinking of only their needs and desires. “I need a parking space. I can’t find one. I’ll make my own, screw the rules.” Furthermore, this type of person is not exactly open to criticism about their douchey behavior. My hubs, who is a professional guide, is forever telling me stories from the cliff that illustrate this. Like the time he asked two guys not to rappel directly off of a small tree when there was walk off/down climb option less than an 100 feet away. They defended their actions saying that because the tree already had grooves from being rapped off of before, it was OK for them to do the same. *facepalm* Or the dude in the lifted 4×4 who decided it would be a good idea to park half way in the woods simply because he could. He unnecessarily mowed over some brush and sapplings, for what??? When Hubs asked him to simply back up the truck so that it was no longer half in the woods, the owner of said truck started screaming at him that it was none of his damn business where and how he parked.

Those are just two incidents from one month this summer, but similar encounters happen routinely. And they are primarily why I don’t have a lot of hope in the success of the Commit to the Pact campaign.

The campaign features several well-known climbers like Alex Honnold, Tommy Caldwell and even Lynn Hill. The idea is that even for those of us who do already practice Leave No Trace and other ways of minimizing our impact, we can help the cause of maintaining access by encouraging others to ‘do the right thing’ when we see them doing the ‘wrong thing.’ But how is this supposed to work when the wrong-doers are largely not receptive to criticism and feedback that what they are doing is in fact, wrong? How do you teach a selfish person to care about how their actions potentially impact others? Particularly in climbing culture, many of the personalities drawn to climbing are independent types who eschew societal norms to a certain extent. We have a sort of ‘cowboy culture,’ so how are you going to tell that kind of person that they need to conform to a certain ethic?

Does something need to be done about this issue? Definitely. I know that I, for one, am tired of picking up other people’s garbage, seeing trees on the cliff dead or dying because someone couldn’t be bother to walk over to the rap route or shaking my head for the umpteenth time at someone’s douchey park job (Hey folks visiting the Gunks- in case you couldn’t figure it out, those little green things sticking out of the dirt serve to mark out INDIVIDUAL parking spaces, so please stop taking up TWO parking spaces, especially on the weekends!!!) In the end, I do think that campaigns like this one are better than nothing at all, especially if we as the climbing community can learn from the experience and use it to create more effective campaigns in the future. I just wish the donation I make to the Access Fund each month would have been used for something that would have a better chance of fixing the problem.

YOUR TURN! Tell me what you think of the campaign! Do you think it will work? Or is it just preaching to the choir? Do you see these same issues at your home crag as well? Got any ideas for a more effective strategy for dealing with them????

So the ugly truth is that I have had body issues since my early teens. Even uglier, is that that makes me a completely normal adult American woman.

Climbing has been both help and hinderance. By shifting the focus to strength and technique, it has given me a yardstick to measure myself that has nothing to do with the scale and everything to do with the YDS.

On the other hand, strength-to-weight ratio is huge in climbing. Most of the climber chicks I know are tiny. So much so, that I often feel like ‘the fat girl of climbing’ next to most of them. It makes sense- the less weight to lift, the larger the effective finger strength. The problem is that I have used my lack of aptitude for climbing as reinforcing feedback that I’m too fat to climb hard.

The smarter thing to do of course, would be to not buy into that kind of negativity; to be proactive and lose a little fat, but more importantly to train hard. Being a Gunks climber, I can pull strong through overhangs, but also haven’t had to develop a lot of finger strength to pull hard on tiny holds since most overhangs under 5.10 have jugs. In fact, the mental game has been my greatest area of weakness, so I’ve been leading too much on terrain that just isn’t that physically demanding. Though I realize and can articulate all of this, when you have body issues, the voice you hear is not this logical one, its the one saying negative, ugly things. I remember having a conversation with a climbing friend once, bemoaning that I was ‘too fat’ to be able to do a pull-up. He emphatically denied that I was fat, forcing me to concede by saying, “Fine, I have the wrong arm-to-ass ratio!” Interestingly enough, once I began to see the problem as a simple mathematic problem, I started working on getting my arms bigger, doing inverted rows and a few weeks later, got my first full body-weight pull-up.

A similar, subtle transformation has been happening this season as well. Not realizing it, I had been telling myself for years, that I couldn’t lead harder because I’m fat (not because I was a chicken shit, which is more true) and sadly, I believed this. There have been no grand epiphanies here, just shifts in thinking so small, I don’t even know how and where they began. One shift was realizing that my goal is leading 5.8 and 5.9 trad routes, not some thin, overhanging 5.13. I can climb the routes I want to lead on TR just fine, so there is nothing about my body shape or size preventing me from leading them, its totally mental. For some reason though, its easier to think its because of my body than to do the scarier thing of putting my money where my mouth is and taking the sharp end.

I also started expressing gratitude for my body through yoga. More useful than the breathing and stretching was the mental work the teacher had us do to express gratitude in the moment for all that our bodies can do. I started taking this practice with me on hikes, at the gym and on the cliff, offering thanks for my health, strength and mobility.

I also read a lot of books on both mental & physical training for climbing this season and started incorporating what I learned, especially about finger training. I finally realized that if finger strength for small holds is my weakness, than the only way to get better is to train that until I turn it into a strength. My arms weren’t strong enough to do a pull-up, but by training, I over came that and made them strong enough. Finger training could do the same. We put up a hang board in July and I started training on it. Progress is seemingly slow, but I am already starting to see benefits.

The sum of all these subtle shifts is that I am having my best climbing season ever. I’ve made a lot of progress and achieved several long-standing goals. At some point, I stopped telling myself ‘I’m too fat to do that,’ and started reminding myself that ‘everything I want is on the other side of fear.’ That I don’t have to become anorexic to be a better climber, I just have to be willing to lean-in to the fear of pushing myself on lead. I’m also more at peace with my body than I’ve ever been. Yesterday, at the gym, I even cracked a smile as I saw in the mirror just how strong I have become. 🙂

If you follow me on Instagram, you saw the picture. It was a Tuesday, midday. I’ve been eagerly absorbing some of the new books out on training for climbing this season, and had gone to the local gym to do an “ARC” workout. This basically involves doing 2-3 sets of 25-30 minutes of climbing (traversing) with the goal to stay just under the “pumped” feeling in your forearms. You do work up a light sweat. Which is why half way though my first set, I got to a rest spot and removed my shirt to continue on in a sports bra and the yoga capris I had on. After finishing my first set, I was doing my prescribed 10 minute rest when the gym’s owner struck up a conversation with me. It started off benignly enough, and then he slipped it in the conversation like a mom hiding veggies in her kids’ meatloaf: he said that what I was wearing was fine for now (I was the only person there at the time) but if any children came, I would need to cover up because what I was wearing was not appropriate for children.

He might as well have walked up to me and slapped me across the face.

I asked him (nicely) how my outfit was inappropriate for children when I was much more covered than a woman in a bikini at the beach, a setting that families with children often go to. His argument was that a family is more prepared to see that at the beach than at the gym. Not prepared to see women in gym clothes at the gym? Really??? Perhaps sensing that he had just pissed off the big, bad, feminist, he back-paddled, stating that it was simply the gym’s policy and that if a guy was climbing shirtless, they would also be asked to cover up.

Shell-shocked and wanting to finish my workout, I acquiesced by agreeing to cover up if kids suddenly materialized in the gym, but continued my work out in the offending outfit. However, I was so bothered by the whole exchange, I couldn’t focus. I felt body-shamed. I felt uncomfortable. I felt wrong. I felt like I had been sexualized without my consent while doing an activity that I don’t equate with sexuality at all. And I was angry that those feelings had been put on me at a climbing gym.

‘Cuz here’s the thing. There is nothing inherently ‘inappropriate’ about a woman in a sports bra and yoga pants at a gym. And there is nothing inherently ‘inappropriate’ about a woman’s body for children. Children come from, and are initially sustained by, a woman body’s for crying out loud. Children don’t sexualize a woman’s body, adults do that for them. That is why I felt so uncomfortable after the exchange- by claiming it was for the protection of innocent children, children who weren’t even present at the time, this guy had just gone there. He had made it a sexual thing.

Some of the guys reading this may be saying, ‘so what?’ Well here’s the problem: how is sexualizing my gym outfit I’m wearing at the gym different from telling a woman she has to wear a burka because seeing her wrist or ankle might ‘tempt a man to sin’? It’s not. Its the same logical framework. In both cases, self-control is co-opted from the (in this case) heterosexual male, with responsibility being forced upon the female victim. Aside from the sheer unfairness of this, if I were a man, I would be appalled that society thought so little of me as to equate me to an unneutered dog, simply following my urge to hump everything in sight. Did you really climb to the top of the evolutionary ladder to create excuses to act like an animal? Was all the energy nature put into evolving human beings to have the largest frontal lobes of any species before or since, all for naught? Isn’t this exactly what we are saying to males in our society when we use ‘boys will be boys’ as a justification for rape? Or when we take away from a girl’s education to enforce a dress code so as ‘not to distract the boys?’

Don’t get me wrong, if I had children, I would police what my daughter wore in public. Why? Because the unfortunate reality is that we live in a culture where this garbage happens. Where victim-blaming is pervasive and where a woman’s outfit still garners the reaction, ‘she was asking for it.’ And if I had son, I would teach him self-control. That there is nothing wrong with his sexuality, but as a human member of society, it is HIS responsibility to control the expression of his sexuality. That all women should be treated with respect and as fellow human beings, not simply objects of his own sexual gratification. And most importantly, I would teach him that bodies in workout clothing in a gym, or bathing suits at a beach can be viewed without attaching any sexuality to them.

In the end, I ended my workout early and asked the owner (politely) to show me where in the waiver it explicitly outlined the dress code. He could not. It was not in the rules posted on wall (though the rule specifying shoes must be worn was important enough to warrant mention there) nor was it in the written form I had initialed and signed acknowledging the gym policy’s at the outset. Citing my extreme discomfort with how this non-policy seemed to be capriciously enforced, I asked for, and was granted, a refund. Perhaps sensing the big pile of bullshit he had just just stepped in, the owner meekly reassured me that I was still welcome back anytime I wanted, provided I wear children-appropriate climbing attire of course.

As I walked out to my car, still reeling from the byzantine exchange I had just experienced, the man followed me out to my car with a copy of the operations manual (available to employees) in hand to show me where it was a written policy that shirts were required by all gym-goers. Pro tip for the guys out there: if you have just been a creepster, sexualized a woman’s outfit and shamed her body for being inappropriate for children, following her out to her car is NOT a good idea as this will serve only to maker her feel more vulnerable and further violated. I pointed out to him that if he was so adamant about this policy, it would behoove him to post it on the wall and also rewrite his waiver so that it is explicitly stated to climbers upon their first visit to the gym.

Luckily, I think this incident was an out-lying data point within the climbing community. I think most climbers are completely comfortable with seeing members of the opposite gender climbing shirtless. We can see it and appreciate the pleasurable visual representative of their strength without going to Creepy-town about it. But I tell this story because I am not so naive as to think ‘it can’t happen here, not in our community.’ The fact is that I climb with a lot of women. Every last one of us have of our stories of male partners making unwanted, un-encouraged sexual advances while climbing or on climbing trips- the lean-in for a kiss before you take her off belay, the ‘extra-special’ spot while bouldering that involves an unsolicited grope of her bum, or the ‘oops I forgot the second tent, guess we’ll have to share my one-person tent’ trick. Sometimes it more insidious: telling a woman that you only lowered yourself to climb at her level because you thought you were going to get laid or getting angry and making passive aggressive comments when she insists on booking separate rooms for your climbing trip. (The first one happened to me personally, the second to a climbing partner of mine.) This is how rape culture presents itself in our community- when female climbers are treated like objects of sexual gratification instead of fellow climbers. Furthermore, unwanted kissing, groping and touching constitute sexual assault.

What I am NOT trying to do here is hate on climber-dudes. As a heterosexual woman, I love and appreciate all my male climber friends, but as climbers and friends. My intent here is to show that facets of rape culture exist even in our little sub-culture, but even more than that, I want to see more women climbing. I want to see more women being comfortable in the mountains, taking the lead and really growing as people because of their participation in our sport. Climbing has taught me so many wonderful things, I’d like other women to have that same opportunity. But it’s going to be hard to create those opportunities if one of the objective risks of the sport is sexual objectification and possibly even assault. Since most of the climber guys I talk to seem very keen on finding a romantic relationship with a female climbing partner, it behooves them to also see more women participating in the sport. So fellas, here’s some quick tips to do your part:

Use common sense. If you wouldn’t spot your buddy with a hand on his ass, don’t do it to a woman. If you would like to touch a woman beyond what would be normal in climbing, simply ask permission. It hopefully goes without saying that if she denies you permission, do not go ahead with it anyway.

If you meet a climber chick you are interested in dating, do not ‘climbing date’ her. You can go climbing together to get to know her initially, but if you develop romantic feelings toward her and find yourself wanting to touch her or have contact beyond what you would with a male climbing partner, ask her permission, and take her on proper date. We’re psyched about climbing too and when we’re climbing, we want to focus on the climbing! So let’s save that awkwardness of a date for a non-climbing time and venue.

That’s it. My two rules for weeding out rape culture in the climbing community and making it a more, fun, welcoming, positive place for us all.